![]() ![]() Skype for Business is built right into Microsoft Office, so features like presence, IM, voice and video calls, and online meetings are available to be used by other Office apps. Screenshots released by Microsoft show Skype for Business video calls (top) using the same Skype interface, able to connect to a list of Skype or Lync contacts. Skype for Business will also keep the popover window that shows the details of a call if a user moves to another application. It’s possible, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. It would also require all Skype for Business users to have the Office Suite, which isn’t practical. And certainly isn’t likely for the Skype Consumer users.” A fresh new look “That would require Outlook to adopt a UI that supports telephony, IM, video, and desktop/application sharing. ![]() “I can see making calls from Outlook, but the Skype for Business client and Skype Consumer clients won’t go away. ![]() Snodgrass said he doesn’t think so, at least in the short term. Will video conversation and chat eventually just be a component of Outlook? Microsoft Tivo, for example, was founded on a novel concept-“pausing” live TV-but DVR functions are now just a feature of modern cable boxes. You have to wonder now, however, how long Skype will be maintained as a separate product. With Lync now dead, Skype will carry the torch. On the other hand, Microsoft essentially had the best of two collaboration products to pull from. These numbers pale in comparison to Zoom’s. Why this matters: Since 2013, customers have wondered why Microsoft kept both Skype and Lync around, because the overlap between the two products was so great. The free consumer version of Skype limits you to 100 participants, but paying for a Microsoft Teams plan can get that number to 300. Basically, “there’s no massive underlying technological change that has occurred,” said Andrew Snodgrass, a research vice president at analyst firm Directions on Microsoft.
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